When Women Lost the Vote: A New Exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution

As we rapidly approach a historic presidential election, the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia is looking back to a little-known moment in our nation’s suffrage history: when women and free people of color were legally entitled to vote from 1776 to 1807 in Revolutionary New Jersey. The story is told in the groundbreaking new exhibition, When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story, 1776 – 1807, which runs from October 2, 2020 through April 25, 2021.

A generous $25,000 grant from the NSDAR in 2018 helped launch the groundbreaking research for this exhibit, which has provided proof of women voting during this period. Featured in the exhibition will be several recently discovered poll lists that document -- for the first time -- that large numbers of women voted in New Jersey between 1776 and 1807. To date, there have been 163 women voters and at least four free Black male voters identified on these lists who cast ballots across the state from 1800 to 1807.

Additionally, the DAR Museum has loaned a muslin dress to the Museum of the American Revolution for this exhibit. The dress is a sheer white cotton woven and embroidered in India and represents the height of cutting-edge neoclassical fashion of about 1800-1805. It descended in a New Jersey branch of the Livingston family, of which Robert Livingston, founding father and later ambassador to Paris, is one of the most prominently known members. The most likely owner of this dress is Eleanor Armstrong, daughter of Susanna Livingston and James Francis Armstrong, b. 1785 in Trenton NJ and married there in 1803. (It may have been her wedding dress, not because it was white but because brides wore the most fashionable dress they could afford, and white dresses would be the most fashionable choice at this time.)

Featured in the exhibition will be the original manuscript of the letter Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John urging him to “Remember the Ladies,” on loan from the Massachusetts Historical Society. Its display in the Museum’s gallery marks the letter’s first return to Philadelphia since John Adams originally received the letter in 1776!

For those who cannot make it to the Museum, the exhibition also will be made accessible to remote visitors from around the world through a robust, free online experience, launching in the Fall of 2020. The online experience will feature explorations of the newly discovered poll lists and other primary source documents; a look at history-making discoveries and how historians and genealogists do their work; provocative questions, exercises, and prompts for discussion; as well as a glossary of terms, and opportunities to learn more. It also will include interviews with the exhibition’s curators, eminent historians, and other special guests. A full, downloadable teacher resource guide will accompany the exhibition’s virtual experience, allowing the opportunity for classrooms and DAR chapters around the country to explore the virtual exhibit.

To inquire about how your DAR chapter or local school can have an educator-led, virtual tour of WWLTV, call 267-579-3623 or email [email protected] at the Museum of the American Revolution.

Image Credit: Martha Githens, ca. 1805, Painted by Raphaelle Peale, Image used with permission of the photographer

Image Credit: Poll List, Montgomery Township, New Jersey, October 13 & 14, 1801, Courtesy of the New Jersey State Archives, Department of State